Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky / Something strange, almost unprecedented, occurs about 25 minutes into Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky. As the French bio-pic detailing the affair between two 20th century icons unfolds, it turns into a good movie after a suffocating, conventional and presumptuous beginning.
‘Ohina Short Film Showcase / Lance Rae, one of the organizers of the ‘Ohina Short Film Showcase, says it best: “Not everyone gets to see short films. They’re at Showdown in Chinatown, they’re from HIFF.
The Other Guys / The Other Guys, the fourth collaboration between Will Ferrell and screenwriter/director Adam McKay, is a schizophrenic film in a number of ways. It’s a wacky parody of dozens of standard cop movies while being a fairly standard cop film.
Dinner for Schmucks / 1998 brought about a marvelous, albeit dark, French movie written by Francis Veber (screenwriter of La Cage Aux Folles) and re-titled in the States as The Dinner Game. For the kind of person who complains whenever they are required to “read a movie,” there is Dinner for Schmucks, the new Hollywood remake/re-imagining that takes away the subtitles along with the meat and teeth that made the original so remarkable.
Micmacs / The newest comedy Micmacs by writer-director Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie) is a seriously whimsical tale with dramatic undertones about a video clerk who, courtesy of an errant drive-by shooting, has a bullet implanted in his brain. (It’s too risky to operate on.) Back from the hospital, our hero Bazil–the great comic actor Dany Boon–finds that he’s lost his job and is soon out on the streets since no one wants a clerk with a timebomb in his head.
The Secret of Kells / In addition to Up, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Coraline and The Princess and the Frog, it was almost certain that the last Oscar nomination for the 2009 Best Animated Feature Film would have gone to Ponyo, 9 or Disney’s A Christmas Carol.
The Kids Are All Right / First off, The Kids Are All Right is a terrific movie; funny and on target all the way. Second off, it’s not propaganda, not a “plea for understanding,” not politically correct, and not patronizing.
Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work / A new film by Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg (The Devil Came on Horseback, The Trials of Darryl Hunt) documents a year in the life comic legend Joan Rivers, focusing not on her rise and fall, but on how she’s never stopped working–and yes, appearing on the QVC network to hock her own line of jewelry counts as work. In Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Rivers reveals an old appointment book filled with four to six appointments a day.
The Girl Who Played with Fire / Coming with a shorter turnaround time and greeted with as much anticipation as The Lord of the Rings series, is the second in Stieg Larsson’s bestselling Millenium trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire, which opens Friday, July 23, at Kahala theaters. But, as is often the problem with sequels, there is too much of everything to tell a proper story, even considering its two-hour-plus running time.
Inception / When not making Batman movies, writer-director Christopher Nolan loves a good puzzler. Joining Memento and The Prestige is Inception and this mindtrip is his wildest invention yet–and it ably earns a second viewing.
Terribly Happy / Armed with l2 international awards and an awesome reputation, the Danish dark drama/parable Terribly Happy, a wise-ass title, can burrow under your skin and stay there a while, as vivid as a dream. At first it seems like a tale about second chances.
Cyrus / In Cyrus, John C. Reilly plays John, an overweight, depressed loser whose only confidant is his ex-wife who still takes his despondent late night calls out of guilt–even taking him to parties in hopes that he’ll meet someone, thereby freeing her obligations.
Predators / Hoping to squeeze a few more drops of box office blood from the franchise, the “makers” of Predators try to keep things moving, and do, in this scaled-down, small-cast, low-budget programmer–shooting some nice scenes in Hawaii, and then scuttling over to a high-def production center in Austin, Texas. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but it’s an uphill fight: clichés abound, familiar action sequences are revived, and the casting is…well…it’s another bad Adrien Brody sci-fi film.
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse / It’s too easy to take cheap shots at how vapidly stupid The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is. Instead, let’s look at the things it–shockingly–managed to get right.
Solitary Man / Solitary Man is the type of film that Michael Douglas excels at. Although he can ably play the cocky and the confident in such showier showcases like Romancing the Stone, Wall Street and The American President, he’s better in subtle stories as broken men at the end of their careers and relationships.
I Am Love / Movies that deeply divide audiences and critics are probably worth looking into. Something about them has stirred the passions of people.
Knight / If you were going to make a movie about a handsome, athletic male of questionable mental stability, the absolute right thing to do would be to cast Tom Cruise. Knight & Day, not Valkyrie, should have been his return to the silver screen after hopping around Oprah’s couches and antagonizing Matt Lauer with his views on psychiatry.
Please Give / Please Give, a smart-as-hell slice-of-life comedy, is the very definition of a New York indie: character driven, direct, unflinching and probably doomed at the box office. (But its DVD afterlife will be a word-of-mouth success.) Written and directed by Nicole Holofcener–none is better at this kind of thing–Please Give has a doubly ironic title, the reason for which is in keeping with the rest of this intricate, organized film; it manages to be satirical and sympathetic toward its characters, as well as skeptical and embracing.
8: The Mormon Proposition / The documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition examines the 2008 movement by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints–the Mormon church–to push for the passage of California’s infamous Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment clarifying marriage to be between only a man and woman. As we see in the film’s introduction, this resulted in the repeal of many marriages for same sex couples, most of whom flocked to San Francisco earlier that year to joyously unite in holy matrimony, only to have the union taken away from them “before the champagne was even warm.” The Mormon church is painted here as an insidious cult, operating like a Holy Mafia, pulling the strings behind the scenes to under-report its financial contributions to puppet organizations they created (coalitions that operate without the stigma of being associated with religion), while strong-arming its followers to donate all the money they have.
Toy Story 3 / There’s a heartbreaking moment near the beginning of Toy Story 3 involving subterfuge by the toys just to get a moment of their owner Andy’s attention. But the now 17-year-old only shrugs, disinterested as he wrests his phone away from Rex the dinosaur’s (voiced by Wallace Shawn) hands.
The Karate Kid / To reiterate the sentiments of Black Belt Theater aficionados all over the world, the remake of The Karate Kid should have been titled The Kung Fu Kid. There.
Mother and Child / The last few years have seen a number of “everything is connected” dramas, and it’s no surprise that the latest of the bunch, Mother and Child, is attached to Rodrigo García, director of several episodes of the most interconnected television shows around (Carnivàle, Six Feet Under, In Treatment), and producer Alejandro González Iñárritu, director of 21 Grams and Babel. Even passing familiarity with these titles lets you know what you’re in for: a sweeping arc and characters who don’t know one another, yet whose individual decisions and actions profoundly affect each other.
The Messenger / Let’s get a few things straight. The Messenger is a flat-out masterpiece.
Splice / Elsa and Clive (Sarah Polley and Adrien Brody) are a brilliant, ambitious scientist-couple experimenting with gene splicing. They create a new species of lumpy creatures that look like flesh-colored caterpillars.
Get Him to the Greek / As how The Cleveland Show sprouted from Family Guy, so does Get Him to the Greek sprout from 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall, taking one notable character–in this case Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) and expanding his back-story. As is the case with both examples, neither is as good as the original, but they both have their moments.
Given the city’s crumbling infrastructure and rail controversy, it’s hard to believe anyone would want to be the next mayor of Honolulu. But a few do want the job, including the incumbent, Mayor Peter Carlisle, the former Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney who won a 2010 special election to fill the remainder of Mufi Hannemann’s term.
I’d never been to a Honolulu City Council meeting until a few weeks ago. Features, not politics, was my beat.
Victoria Holt Takamine is a kumu hula, a cultural activist and a teacher and has an impeccable pedigree to back up all these titles. Born of an alii family whose kuleana was in Moanalua, she graduated as a hula teacher under the legendary Auntie Maiki Aiu Lake and taught hundreds of students in her own halau (Pua Alii ‘Ilima) and at the University of Hawaii.
On April 25, a state judge dismissed trespassing charges against a Kauai man after finding that he had been exercising traditional native Hawaiian rights hunting wild pigs on private land. Kui Palama, 28, was arrested on Jan.
The city plans to dish out $3.5 million from its Affordable Housing Fund and either purchase or renovate a structure to provide transitional housing for Honolulu’s special needs homeless population. “Our community has invested considerable effort and resources in addressing homelessness,” Mayor Peter Carlisle said in a statement, “but there remains a population whose disabilities or chronic conditions make it difficult for them to participate in traditional shelter programs.” Carlisle is referring to those homeless with mental illnesses, addictions and physical disabilities.
Makaweli Poi faces an uncertain future after its owner, a corporate subsidiary of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) ordered the West Kauai mill to suspend operations May 23. Mona Bernardino, chief operating officer of the corporation, Hiipoi LLC, says the move to shut down Makaweli Poi was prompted mainly by financial concerns.
A resolution adopted by the City Council will solidify an agreement between the City and County of Honolulu and the University of Hawaii Water Resources Research Center (UH-WRRC) to conduct an analysis of impacts from ocean sewer outfalls on the marine environments off of Oahu. The city will pay UH-WRRC as much as $2.5 million for biological and sediment studies in portions between now and June 30, 2017 .
Along with the deep, verdant growth of spring sprouts an unyielding desire to spend more time in the open air. That’s why it should come as no surprise that National Bike Month falls in the sun-drenched time of May.
Of the many letters you publish against rail, how many offer an alternative that won’t send us into further economic demise? Billions of gallons of oil are imported for us from every oil-producing nation on this planet so that we can buy billions of gallons of gasoline.
TheBus is taking a back seat to rail. At the May 3 Downtown Neighborhood Board meeting, an audience member asked city Transportation Director Wayne Yoshioka when we could expect the bus route cancellations and changes to be reversed.
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